What's with the stuff about the Emperor disolving the Senate? What's with the issues of boarding a consular ship on a diplomatic mission? A lot of what goes on in the OT is beyond the comprehension of kids, like Jabba the Hutt's raison d'etre.

Like all six Star Wars movies!

How so? Why can't it just be classified as an ensemble? And what's wrong with Qui-Gon in that role? He's the one the PoV mostly follows, from the initial shots boarding the ship, to the subsequent battles and invasion. In fact, I would say that he dominates tPM more than any single character in any single movie, except possibly Luke in SWaNH. He's also the guy who gets everything done, from rescuing the queen & advising her to flee the planet against her instincts, discovering Anakin, betting their mission on his ability, freeing him, fighting off Darth Maul, and bringing both Anakin & the emergence of the Sith to the attention of the Jedi Council. Yeah, he didn't have much to do with Amidala's political storyline, but then neither did Luke with Leia & the Rebellion, aside from wanting to join it, in much the same way a high school athlete hopes to make a pro team some day. After his death Obi-Wan's subsequent action are entirely an extension of Qui-Gon's story - he slays Qui-Gon's killer, with Qui-Gon's weapon, and steps into his shoes to defy the Council and undertake the teaching of Anakin, when he had previously been vocal in his opposition to both courses of action.

I think we're meant to see that as him being run by the Force, and as an expression of how powerful it is in him. Qui-Gon specifically attributes his pod-racing skill to his Force talents, and his shout "Now this is podracing" as he flies through the enemy ship suggests he is feeling the same way he does during a race, when he is subsumed in the Force.

An aristocratic ex-Jedi stealing the moral high ground as the leader of a group with a legitimate beef with the Republic? Dooku was Robert E Lee and the two of them combined to foreshadow Anakin's fall, what with the cyborg-thing, the arrogant idealist falling to the Dark Side, the Sith apprentice being turned on by Palpatine/Sidious in favor of a fresh new apprentice?